haiku -1

Are you gay?
I need to know.
For I love your money.

A happy weekend in Amdavad- part 2!

As promised to the dude who gave me a bumper discount on my purchase of LCD from the brand that he works for, I write one more post on Shishir Mishra’s adventures in gujjuland.
Life could not get any duller than it was. So dull, that I didn’t even realize that holi was coming this weekend. It was that one rare weekend where we gujjus get two simultaneous holidays. (Unfortunately, in my workaholic company, Saturday is a full working day!) Somebody did ask me, what I was doing for the weekend, but I had long forgotten that this was a holi + Shishir-visiting-Amdavad special weekend. So I replied “nothing, as usual” in the tone of the loser that I have become after staying in this dry state for so long.
But when Saturday evening arrived at last, my boss took off to Udaipur and then I took off to spend two full days sleeping, having completely forgotten about holi n all. You see, unlike my sister I don’t put too much pressure on myself thinking ‘o shit, it’s a weekend; it’s a festival, what’s the plan? I can’t be at home, doing nothing while the world is out there celebrating!!!’
Sunday was a quiet afternoon spent with Sasha and Shishir discussing laptops, Russian dancers and those secret seats outside CCD, which are actually places to meet blind dates according to a theory by Shasha! We all decided to meet the next day morning to celebrate holi together.
However the next day, while Shishir was still asleep (that’s an understatement)
The next day, while Shishir was sloshed somewhere with half a bottle of a gin named ‘Bombay sapphire’; my sister and I had already started our holi celebrations with the half friends-half strangers gujju gang at my apartment. After an hour of colors, water being splashed from hoses and balloons splat from building tops, Mohit and Nisarg (Anu’s friends) decided to get some cigarettes. The four of us, went to the terrace from where we watched the world under our feet. While they smoked, we tapped our feet to random bollywood songs played on Nisarg’s phone. Meanwhile, holi celebration at the society was over and people had bathed squeky clean and come down for a sophisticated lunch. Anu and I were the only two people still looking like rag pickers with green and yellow colored hair, waiting endlessly for Shishir to turn up. At last he did. And brought along a friend whose name is spelt R-I-S-H-A-B-H; riding on a royal Enfield bullet that deserved a red carpet welcome.
Too late for holi we thought. Heck, who cares! Anu and I went to the first floor, knocked on yet another half friend-half strangers’ door and asked him to throw buckets of water on Shishir and Rishabh. Meanwhile, the duo was standing right under the balcony, waiting in great anticipation of the water that was conspired to be thrown. In fact, the bucket idea was theirs. It just wouldn’t feel like holi without a little bit of water and colors, would it!
Couldn’t let my friends leave town, without having drenched them. So, I gave them an Amdavadi holi to cherish. So what, if it lasted for only 10 minutes? The Enfield rode off with goodbyes and the red carpet was all rolled up!
Happy holi!

A quarter life crisis

A bit too soon to get here, but it's a sad little, queer world when you are 20 something and don't know exactly where you belong. This is more full of surprises than the much hyped about adolescence, teenage or mid life crisis. At least, you get a warning before all of that!!

The situation here is rather simple. At office, my colleagues and therefore good friends are all people in the age group of 30 to 40, mostly married- on the other side of the hill. Incidentally because I am the branding in charge of the preschool business- Redbricks Junior, I have conveniently become a personification of the preschool mascot called 'Junior'. I am the giggling kiddo, who is always at the service of these baaps and 'heads'. At the same time, I get the 'golden opportunity' of hanging out on the other side of the hill. This includes intellectual conversations, self actualizing stories, camel cart and cycle rides as healthier option to cars, sophisticated plays and a crazy sense of workoholism and commitment. Enjoying all this, while giggling like a recently transformed adult who used to be a kid-in-a-candy-store.

After the giggling in office is over, I need my kind of recreation too. That means dancing, coffee shops, bike rides et al. Dancing vis a vis intellectual conversations on progress of the economy, cheap coffee shops vis a vis 'fine dining experiences and motor bike rides vis a vis. Honda civic drives. So, enter 'Spin Academy'- my dance classes with Aakash Karnataki. Just when I thought mera bachpan laut aaya; I realized 'dude, this isn't where I parked my car!' I find myself attracted to this adorable guy who dances amazingly well. The next day he tells me he is in 11th standard, after addressing me as 'ma'am'. After doing a stage performance with 'baccha party' I returned home.

My sis gave me a sweet assurance; “You want friends? You can hang out with my friends (batting eyelashes)”. Lovely as she is, her offer sounded even better.. Xavierites in their early 20s seemed a far better option compared to school going kiddos. Enter New Year's eve party with sis and her gang! Alas, they address me as 'Didi' but I don't get discouraged by this minor set back.

I suddenly realized that in the company of younger people, you automatically, invariably and uncontrollably start acting like a 'mother goose'. When one of them was priding herself on not owning a mobile phone I started harping a lecture on the harmful effects of electromagnetic radiations emitted by cellular phones. Just some knowledge dished out by one of my office colleagues from the other side of the hill (that is to say, the academic head who has a daughter of my age and I went out for coffee with her - not the daughter, the 'head').

Anyway, here too I found it hard to place myself. Mature or immature? Young girl or career woman? Party hopper or intellectuality seeker? Been-there-Done-that or Innocent fool? Who am I ?(at the risk of sounding like Peter Parker).

Among all these confusions, it failed to occur to me that I have the best of both worlds. The carefree random simpleton fun of growing-up life and the responsibility and commitment of a grown-up's lifestyle.. Neither of these people are my friends, I walk alone. They are momentary companions of my transcendental existence unbound by time, age and human bonds. Just as they say 'tweet is a lonely man'; hey blog is a lonely women too!

blinds

Guitar strumming a lonely tune as you close the venetian blinds. The light was blinding my sight, now it is the darkness that has the same effect. DESOLUTE. The graph is sloping negatively, gravity taking its toll. Dullness has now reached the face. It scars the once beautiful, once ebullient youthful, err; childlike countenance. You were there to open the blinds. Now you disappear in the oblivion. I seek another hero, or just a ticket to another destination. Done with this town!

Closing the blinds for good.

BLUE!

We are dreamers.. we live half immersed in an ocean, seeing reality only through a periscope. We live in a submarine of hopes. We float in a tide of intoxication. We swim in the sea of wisdom from heartbreaks. We drown in the abyss of detachment. Its a massive bubble in the universe and we fear if it would ever burst. We seek the island of Man Friday. We. All of us inside my head. in a blue trance, immersed in the blueness of the blurry horizon with thoughts swirling like a whirlpool in the anticipation of love, life, money, power and happiness. And then the ocean sweeps it all away in an eternal silence.
Blue!

the dance of the slum child..

Late for office, yet again. The bitching about life and work peaks and ebbs as I step on the gas and steer my santro violently on the ahmedabad streets. My thoughts halt, and so does my car as the traffic light turns red.
A rare and beautiful sight catches my attention. A little slum girl, with tattered clothes and uncouth hair looks at me, and there is a spark in her eyes and she smiles at the world. She is beautiful. I turn away thinking that she would come closer for begging. I was wrong, she was blissful in her world.

I turned to look at her again. She was dancing. She raised her hands and joined her fingers in the air, dancing away the agony of not having a roof over her. She did little somersaults and sprang about in the pavement. Her younger sister came running with a bag of garbage. My slum child dumped her hand into the garbage bag and closed her fist with the garbage dust and hurled it in the air. She danced away the misery of poverty.
All this while, I was watching her, my car music acting as beats to her dance. I couldn't help but smile at her and she smiled back. I can swear that she was happy, joyous in her carefree unawareness of the politics and trivial nothings of this world. The lights turned green and I was no longer bitching. The rest of the ride was blissful in the after glow of the slum child's dance.

A happy weekend in amdavad

Amdavad had a new face this weekend. An otherwise monotonous workaholic life in a dry state of boring-ness and gujju-ness, turned into a rather interesting one when my friend Shishir from Bombay decided to grace this village with his presence on the weekend. I guess, god felt pity on me and my silly brochure which I am racing against time to finish before the 2nd of October so that I can make it to Sunaina’s wedding. Having been threatened by my boss that he would cancel my tickets if I don’t finish my work, I had put everything on stake for this brochure.
Symptoms of brochure madness:
• Fevers in the morning due to the pressure
• my office’ so-called-friends turning their backs against me for being too buried in my work without giggling and gossiping with them
• my designer and I on a cold war
• my bosses thinkin she is too cocky cos I look so sullen all the time
• my family thinkin I am not too involved in the family

All this because I was buried under piles of work, nearly impossible timelines and a boss that loves to make ‘changes’ until he gets the perfect brochure out of my nimble hands and nervous heart.
And suddenly there was sunshine! Courtesy, shishir mishra, popularly known as Rohtak. Mican, friend, bad driver. ;0) He announced his arrival to amdavad and we planned to meet at shambu- a happening coffee adda of amdavad. 4 Micans gathered up and the first cigerrete was out already! Niraj, pooja, shashin and I wondered why we never met like this before. We have been here in this shanty town for a year, slogging in our mundane existence. Pehli kyon nahi mile hum, yaar!!
From Shambu, we took off to Rajpat club to do garbo! Alpa and I being in western wear were thrown out of the ring. But the Micans that we are, we all danced outside the ring, where the audience was glaring at us. Not that we were the saroj khans and shiamak davars of Navratri, but that we did what pleased our hearts. This included dance steps that emulated dev anand, manoj kumar and even mithun chakravarti. Soon the apprehensive, gossipy crowd realized who the real losers were. Everyone started imitating us and there were more and more garba dancers outside the circle.
Soon we were bored of the outer circle. So alpa and I simply jumped the wall and had a ball! After the garba fever, my limping feet and my faithful santro took us to Mcdonalds and CCD to fill our stomachs. If this wasn’t enough we decided to go on a long drive. My limping feet gave away and niraj took the reins in his hand. I mean the steering wheel! We had reached a dark, lonely, secluded bridge in the middle of the highway! We stopped over and stared at the night sky! Never seen so many stars! Niraj’s imagination also sighted UFOs in the night sky. (No, we weren’t high on anything!) The cigarettes were out again. The night air was chilling and the music from the car was appealing.
Here comes the best part. A police van pulled up near us and asked us what we were doing there at that hour. We said: Gandhinagar se aayen hai, aaram kar rahen hai. He sniffed through the water bottles and checked every nook and cranny of my car. The look on his face when he couldn’t find any alcohol was supper for the night! We went home laughing!
The next day, thanks to my brochure again I was late to pick the motley crew up and drive around to mica. Shishir failed the driving test, but what do u know, I failed it to. Then Michael Schumacher- Shashin Garach came to the rescue. The mica visit was short yet nostalgic. Beautiful lanes that drove us to our alma matter, the old tank we used to climb, oh dear silver oak, kachnar, the mess- and the best of all CHOTA! Cigarettes again and this time I had to beg for it were savored under the tree at chota that still has a broken tyre-swing hanging on it. We paid our respectful visit to Roxy- mica’s own pet german shepherd who seemed to be growing old and missing PAT. We took Thakur kaka’s blessings and Shashin took us to the railway station in record time! As the train took off, we said bbye to shishir and I promised him a blog post. So, here it is. But it was so much more amazing than it sounds on this post. If these many cigerettes weren’t enough the remains of us had the remains of the cigerretes at the riverside outside Café Natrani.

Sunaina, I am comin to your wedding, I promise. And all the micans in amdavad, we shall now keep making each weekend a special one like this one was! Ahoy!

HaiL CaRRie!

On women’s day, I woke up in an empty bed miles away from my home and parents, in a makeshift apartment that holds my life, my belongings and my office swipe card. In Ahmedabad I work work work, and then I come home and crash with my laptop. (No, the laptop doesn’t crash with me. She has been faithful so far.) For a girl like me the only woman to look up to would be my boss and Carrie Bradshaw. Since I know only little about my boss, I would like to dedicate this post to Carrie. To me Carrie is the ‘morarji bapu’ of single women! She lives the life she wants. She chooses the career that makes her happy. She buys the shoes she likes. She is free, spirited and expressive.
She is an ode to all single women telling them that they need not wait for someone to brighten their lives. On women’s day I’ll be taking off to the salon for a luxurious afternoon. I also intend to shop, for the single gal deserves her shoes. Then in the evening I am off with my gals (the two iyer punnughal I met in Mica) for the women’s day festival at Natrani theatre. I almost forgot to add, I am gonna savor the cutting chai of the chaiwala sitting outside the salon. He has lightened many tired evenings with his mesmerizing cuppa!
Like Carrie I write, shop, and dream. Carrie doesn’t say that men are disposable, but she says that life can be as blissful without a man. Sometimes when the laptop and the coffee are all you have for company celebrate being independent, free and bold. Celebrate your shoes, shirts and bag. Celebrate your blog, your career, your life!
Hail Carrie! (and hail the occasional Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte too!)

Slumdog Millionaires Of The Street

Often when there is too much hype surrounding a certain event, it turns out to be something mediocre. Maybe it is because it doesn’t meet our lofty expectations. Slumdog Millionaire was one such event; a movie about India as viewed through the parallax of the west. Director Danny Boyle throws reality on the faces of the Americans and they applaud. He throws the same reality on our faces and we refuse to cringe or budge. Why doesn’t the movie meet our expectations?

Is it because they showed us something we already knew, were used to and were trying hard to look away from? The great Indian dream is all about the transition from being ‘a back office hub to the world’s knowledge capital’. Sadly, the movie reminds me of all that is bleak and ugly. The bustle of traffic, which I shut my ears to by increasing my Ipod volume to max, the smell of grazing cows on crossroads that I ignore every morning and the sight of the poor street urchin begging. He is probably singing the same song (darshan do ghanshyam) but who is listening?

Have we shut our senses or is the existence of slum dwellings so commonplace that it goes unnoticed to the eye of the capitalist? Probably, the west would have enjoyed the movie much more than us because to us the story is the story of every Indian; nothing that resonates 10 Oscar nominations or golden globe awards। It is not that Slumdog is a bad movie. Danny Boyle’s efforts in creating a Cinderalla story for a street urchin are truly commendable. Sadly it is the Armani clad Indian who is flocking the plexes and not our happy little street urchin.

The so-called Slumdogs, young Jamal, Latika and Salim are portrayed to be innocent little children content in their slums. This is what I see everyday crossing my path on the street as I steer the Alto arrogantly. Orphan children chasing orphan kites; Dancing like young Jamal, hugging, puppy fighting or climbing on each other’s backs. They don’t want to be millionaires. They are the millionaires of the street. They roam about the street as if the world is their playground. They grow up much faster. Street education makes them wise sooner than any refined school, preschool or finishing school. They learn their lessons from the school of life. (That is how probably, Jamal knew that the bizarre host was leading him towards the wrong answer.)

The story of India’s Slumdog millions, (no billions) don’t always get a fairy tale ending. ‘It is written’ is the lesson one is supposed to draw from Slumdog. So, we each chase our own destiny. Some may land up in hot seats; some may find their soul mates at Victoria Terminus while some others may die a silent death.